Datebook: Monday, April 30th ~ 2007

Some of the people in my family were captivated on the weekend by the NFL Draft. In fact, at times, there were shouts, head-banging, and much descriptive language.

Of course, this whole process made me ponder how this might look if applied to ice skating. I am no football expert, but if I understand the process correctly, the team with the fewest season wins gets the first pick from the promising rookies coming from the college ranks. So, the biggest loser gets to select the “best” player I am assuming, in a bid to level the talent pool.

I think you are already jumping ahead of me here.

If applied to Ice Skating this would mean that the two big coaching teams in Michigan would not get any new teams and the coaches with last placements at US Nationals would get the “draft” pick of the medalists from juvenile and intermediate. This would then spread the skating talent across the training centers in the United States.

So with this analogy in mind, you can see why some of the football players were not ecstatic with the team jersey they were assigned. They have played hard all through college and then wind up on a team who hasn’t been in the play-offs in thirty years; many in fact, haven’t played in game past December in this century.

Then some other trading begins.

This is where I get really confused. Teams will trade seasoned players. Great players.

So, in skating, if a coach wanted, say, a Kim and Brent, he would offer a Novice 2nd and a Junior 4th in the hopes of building a stronger team.

“You can’t compare football and skating.” My husband says crisply, as if I tried to vouch for the benefits of Coco Puffs over those of Cheerios. (Which, of course, I could since taste entices you to each the vitamin enriched chocolaty morsels over those bland little multi grain inner-tubes!)

“I know that,” I answer, “but just try to pretend for a moment that football were as important as skating. Would that really level the playing field is my question. Is it the talent or the coaching that is important? And, if the talent is unhappy living somewhere they don’t want to live, wouldn’t that come through in how they play the game, or how they skate?”

“These are men. This is their job. They aren’t going to cry about it.”

“Yes,” I try to reason it out, “but football players only do this for about five months, so it is like a part-time job. Skaters do this all year and many don’t even get a vacation.”

My husband just looks at me.

“So living and training somewhere they don’t want to be would really impact a skater. Plus,” I continue, “Skaters wouldn’t like just being assigned a costume, with the colors already picked out.”

My husband puts his hand over his heart, a new ploy he has devised since his heart attack that initially caused me much alarm and total dysfunction of any conversation, but one I now ignore, as much as his neck cracking and jaw popping Chuck Norris imitations.

“Well, the Governing Council is meeting this week and I’m sure they will have much on the agenda about leveling the playing field, or in skating talk maybe it is “playing the levels”.

My husband looks away and maybe closes his eyes for a moment and then changes channels on the television and asks, “What time does that show come on about Trading Spouses?”

“I don’t know we never watch it. I think one, or both, of the traded spouses have to be really extreme about something to get one there.”

“Oh,” he says quietly. Maybe he really is a bit tired after all.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, April 23rd ~ 2006

“Logic” is a funny word that we banter about often.

The unusual thing about logic is that we use it as noun and as a verb in a manner of speaking--you can “use logic” or “it can be logical.”

Oddly enough, I have been caught up in the concept that we often do not actually apply logic when we use these terms.

And of course, to add to the subplot, men and women sometimes see things differently.

Three weeks ago, while I was at the grocery store, my husband had a heart attack. On the way home, I met an ambulance on our two-lane country road and I had a premonition that it was somehow connected to my house. I berated myself for the remainder of my two mile journey for this voice of doom in my ear.

It wasn’t logical after all.

Even after I arrived home there were no real neon arrows of alarm. There were no crowds of neighbors on the corner, no notes taped to the door that said, “While you were out.”, in fact everything seemed pretty much in order except my husband wasn’t anywhere to be found. This was in fact, a bit of an annoyance on my third trip into the house with the case of water, gallon of milk, and litany of other perishables thrown in those 1/12 ply blue shopping bags that lose their poly bond once they leave the air quality of the food chain).

My daughter, home for the day from skating all week and trained in the world of CSI being filmed in every city of the United States and/or channel surfing past the 20 episodes of Law and Order that seem to be on each night, checked the last number dialed on our portable phone and discovered it was 9-1-1.

It was not logical to believe that time stood still, but it in fact did.

At least, that is, until I answered the phone that was then ringing to tell me that my husband was being transported to one of the two hospitals in our county.

It is not logical to forget to turn onto a road you have driven fifty times a week for the past twenty years, or logical to make deals with whomever is willing to make them in your call to muses.

I arrived at the hospital to be told he was being medivac-ed to the heart trauma center in the next county. The doctors felt he had a blockage and advised he would be out of surgery before I could drive the same distance.

The nurses handed me a plastic bag that contained some of his clothes and advised me that they were sorry that they had to cut off his sweatshirt. When I left that morning he had been working in the yard, wearing his jeans with the knees ripped out, (not Alan Jackson mode) and his zip-up Old Navy sweatshirt that has been ripped, bleached, stretched out, hit by the weed-eater, repeatedly buried under the bags of weekly trash (by me) and rescued and salvaged (by him). His gravitation to bag-man couture is not logical since he has at least twenty shirts and sweatshirts with tags on them in his closet.

“I’m saving them”, he would say.

“Why don’t you just throw out your yard-wear and start wearing some of your older everyday wear as yard clothes and wear your new clothes, that are now five or six years old, everyday.”

He would just look at me. “That doesn’t make any sense (synonym for ‘that is not logical).

I looked at the nurse. “You had to throw it away?”

She nodded, not telling me what I suspected, that the medical staff had not thought the biohazard bags could contain it.

Still, it was not logical to feel teary-eyed over a misshapen rag that had escaped the trash bin by some seemingly magic power. But at that moment, I likened it to Superman’s cape.

I do not remember the drive to the city. I am assuming I did all the correct things. I can only say that somewhere perhaps there is a logical portion of our brains that takes over and guides the other part, the paralyzed part, to go on.

The doctors were right. By the time I arrived at the second hospital, he had two stents put in a major artery and was on the mend. When I walked into the ICU, he was actually awake and worried that the tractor and his garden tools were still out on the lawn.

Yes, three weeks ago the world stood on its edge for a period of time. It does not seem logical that my husband went back to work last Monday, but trust me, he really needed to go.

We have much to be thankful for. Now, twenty-one days later, I am tempted to send a thank you card to the nurses for cutting up that awful sweatshirt.

He, on the other hand, ponders how medical science has developed a procedure that can move surgical devices to the heart through a small hole in the leg but yet cannot fathom how to use a zipper on a shirt and thereby save both patient and valued sweatshirt.

“It’s just not logical”, he says.

That’s true, I think.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, April 16th ~ 2007

It is always important to have a back-up plan.

A plan “B” so to speak.

Winston Churchill, for example, dabbled in bricklaying. Seriously. He had a fall-back plan in case his political life and career didn’t work out. He built his daughter Mary a brick play house when she was eight, he built a brick wall in his garden, and he also mortared a brick cottage for his butler.

We are all now forced to face this concept as we take the plunge into the OD pool of fate. We will need back-up music in case we find the original (no pun intended) isn’t correct. I’m not sure how we’ll find this out, but I’m guessing we will. We need to somehow get a consensus from all parts of the world. Maybe we should seek input from the American Dental Association since dentists seem to commonly get together and vote on things, hence, the toothpaste and mouthwash recommendations—“four out of five dentists recommend….”. They must know how this is done so effectively and could possibly set us on the right track.

Should we put together a compilation tape of all of the junior and senior planned OD songs and send it to all of the judges? They could then tell us if these were “root” songs or not.

I for one, am getting more confused as the clarifications are being interpreted.

The scariest part had to do with costumes. “Props may be attached to costumes.”

I live in a world that is surrounded by symbolic visual imagery, and I have to admit, the visual conflicts of tambourines and flaming arrows is a bit daunting.

Dancers are encouraged to select music from their native country.

We are a melting pot or salad bowl nation. Most of us have such a blend of ancestors that it would take a DNA analysis to find a clear winner. And there are two dancers in a team. Do we, for example, do one and half minutes of Irish clogging and a minute of Korean drums? One minute of Tibetan Ohming and another one with Turkish veils? Belly dancing and Amish Corn-husking to effectively represent both partners?

So we need a back-up plan, or a fall-back plan, just in case.

And it seems that the universal OD survival kit includes a CD of Irish music. Everyone can claim a connection to the Irish. It may be a loose connection but it is there none-the-less.

Anyone who has ever worn green on March 17th can lay claim to a clog or a jig.

Anyone who has ever held a four-leaf clover, or eaten Lucky Charms is, technically, eligible for a River-Dance or two.

The trick this year will be in costuming.

There will have to be areas for Velcro amongst the crystals and seed pearls.

This is needed in case you have to throw out your Appalachian Trails rendition if it is pooh-poohed at Lake Placid (or by the previously mentioned dental convention) and quickly need to insert the templated Irish Blarney tune.

In the event your first selection for your venture out on the limb for OD music is given the cabash, you will need to now change your costume--with props—at a moments notice. It will be easier to just replace the props so you can just rip off your beaver hat and squirrel hunting bag from their velcroed attachment sites, and reapply a sequined shillelagh and felt cut-out of a pot-of-gold.

Who says skating doesn’t prepare you for the real world?

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, April 9, 2007

There are some unusual factors about hospitals today.

For one thing, they have the smallest number of handicap parking spaces. You might argue that they don’t need them since most people are driven by relatives or are transported in ambulances, but, in a society that seems programmed to issue handicap parking decals to 60 percent of the population, I beg to differ. Our town has a small one-story mall with a proportionally sized parking lot. Every morning “Mall Walkers” arrive and fill all of the special parking spots for their daily cardio work-out of 3 to 5 miles of closed shop walking.

The irony, of course, is these velour-workout-suit clad walkers get angry if all of the handicap spots are occupied because it means they will have to, well, walk a longer distance, about 20 feet, to the mall entrance doors so they can begin their, well, walking route.

So, I was a bit shocked to see only five handicapped parking spots in the visitor parking lot at a large metropolitan hospital. Our local Starbucks has three handicap spots right in front of the store which seems to be a 3 to15 ratio compared to the 5 to 500 ratio for the hospital. I haven’t really processed the symbolism of this yet, but I think it somehow relates to degree of seriousness and hospitals aren’t going to fool around with those who get a hang-tag for ingrown toenails anymore than the ushers are going to allow making change from the offering plate at church.

Another unusual factor about hospitals today is, well, they aren’t like Grey’s Anatomy. The patient rooms are not like the Ritz-Carlton which would allow you to build say a large dollhouse like a recent episode. There are very few single rooms and the doubles won’t accommodate a family of eight, like some earlier shows where George’s large family all crowd around with the pack of seven doctors.

I have not been a patient for many years so I was also surprised to note that hospitals today have “Room Service”. I’m not kidding. Years ago, you were given a menu card and a small golf pencil and it was collected by a shower-capped employee. If you forgot to check off an item, like salt and pepper, cream for your coffee, or mayonnaise, well, it was just too bad. Today, you can call down to the kitchen and they will bring you whatever you want with all condiments just as if you are staying at a Holiday Inn except you don’t have to set the tray in the hallway, and worry about tripping over it in the morning.

Another amazing change at hospitals today involves back rubs.

Okay, so you still have those gowns that tie in the back and are a bit short, but now you get a nightly back rub.

For twenty minutes. With lotion.

The staff still wears latex gloves while administering this but after 20 seconds you forget this rubberized sensation and get lost in the mere joy of having your muscles soothed from spending several hours of lying in, well, a craft-matic type of bed. Watching free cable TV.

So it occurs to me with the rising cost of airfare, hotel rooms, and rental cars, that folks could just stay close to home for a little vacation. That’s right. You could decide to have a bit of elective surgery done if no real ailment presents itself and wallow in the lap of luxury for a few days—enjoying a bed that can maneuver to 83 positions, ordering room service, watching TV, and getting daily massages.

The only problem would be if you have handicapped relatives that need visitor parking.

Mombo

No Mombo for 4/2/2007

Editor's Note: There will be no Mombo #9 blog posted today. The next edition will be posted on 4/9/2007.